


Dandelion

by HonorH



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-09
Updated: 2012-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-05 02:17:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HonorH/pseuds/HonorH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the Girl on Fire Ficathon. Prompt: "Katniss, fears about having children who'll be tortured to get to her or dead in the Games don't vanish just because the Capital and the Games have."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dandelion

She sees where things are going before Peeta does, and she sends a note to Dr. Cornelius. He sends her an odd-looking device and instructions on how to use it, and Katniss gives herself a birth-control implant.

After the toasting, after registering their union at the brand-new Justice Building, Peeta broaches the subject of children.

"Ask me again, in a year," Katniss tells him.

He accepts that. Slowly, she grows used to life with him, life without the Capitol or the Games. District 12 starts to come back to life.

But her dreams tell her a different story. In her dreams, the Capitol children who are blown to pieces are her children. The Avox who waits on her, blood dribbling from her mouth, is her daughter. Her son is cut down at the Cornucopia.

"Ask me again, in a year," she tells Peeta after one year's gone.

He's as good as his word, never pushing, never pleading, except that one time every year. But she sees him as he talks to the growing families around them, sees the longing in his eyes every time he holds a baby or plays with a chubby toddler.

And she wishes she could give him this, the one thing he ever asks of her. It's just that . . .

She's never been so afraid of anything. Even when Prim was called at the reaping, the gut-deep terror was mitigated by the fact that she could do something.

This, she can't. Every time she thinks of children, she sees starving bodies. Bodies mangled and torn by the Games or by the Capitol's torturers. Leverage against her for what she's done, or what someone else has done.

"Ask me again, in a year," she keeps saying as she gets a new implant. The hope starts to leach out of Peeta's eyes, and she wonders why he stays with her.

It's because he loves her, she knows, and, slowly, it begins to penetrate, like the sun's rays softening the earth in spring. He's willing to sacrifice potential fatherhood because he wants her like he wants nothing else.

She remembers her father telling her, once, "Fear is an emotion. Courage is a decision."

So she decides. No more implants. She'll believe in the future, for once.

Peeta's thrilled as her belly starts to swell, and it warms her heart while doing nothing to stop the chilling of her bones. Pregnancy is terrible. Not physically; she has no morning sickness and feels fine. But she feels her child move within her and knows, soul-deep, that this child could break her like nothing else.

She wakes up screaming, night after night. Peeta holds her and sings to her.

"What are we doing?" she sobs to him. "How can we bring a child into a world like this?"

"It's our world now, Katniss," he says. "It's our future to shape. It's her future to shape." He's convinced the baby is a girl, wants so badly for it to be a girl. "Trust her. Trust yourself."

She can't, but she trusts him. It's enough for the moment.

The baby is born on a bright spring morning. It is a girl, much to Peeta's joy, and, to Katniss's surprise, hers as well. She realizes she's been letting the Capitol take this from her as well as everything else, and she vows to be present for her daughter's life. They won't get her.

Peeta cuddles them close, and they look down at this thing they've created. "What will we call her?" Peeta asks.

It's something Katniss has given much thought to. She won't name her daughter after any of the dead, that much is certain. Her daughter must have a name that means hope for the future, not grief for the past.

And, as she touches the soft fluff on the baby's head, she knows what to name her.

"Dandelion," she says. "That's her name. Dandelion."

Peeta chuckles. "I guess it is. Dandelion." He smiles that crooked smile of his. "I like it."

The first Dandelion of spring suckles at her breast, and Katniss hopes.


End file.
